A variety of trays for retaining and displaying objects of different sizes have long been known, and these trays have long been provided with compartments configured to the dimensions and contours of the object to be retained so as to securely maintain these objects in the tray.
With the advent of magnetic tape recording, both audio and video, and particularly with the widespread use of recording and playback apparatus in the home, a need has arisen for storing and organizing such tapes. These tapes are widely distributed in cassettes, with boxes provided for the cassettes. The typical user finds over a period of time that he has a number of boxed tape cassettes, and a number of unboxed tape cassettes, each of which it would be desirable to maintain and store for ready access and use. Further, in storing such cassettes it would be desirable to be able to organize the boxed and unboxed cassettes for ready access and replacement in the tray.
Thus Kryter in U.S. Pat. No. 3,756,383 developed a storage case formed with compartments defined by spaced horizontal and vertical ribs serving to accomodate therebetween either a boxed or unboxed cassette.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,432,453 disclosed another variation on the theme where a storage case is formed with compartments having ribs defining spaces in the compartment to accomodate either a boxed or unboxed cassette.
In utilizing the above described storage cases, the case insert or tray is formed of a resilient material such that the ribs defining the spaces accomodating the unboxed cassettes frictionally engage the surfaces of the unboxed cassette so as to resiliently retain same in the tray compartment. As a result of this frictional engagement, each rib is slightly displaced by the positioning of an unboxed cassette thereagainst, so that the empty compartments adjacent the filled compartments tend to become deformed, with the spacing between the walls of empty compartments adjacent the filled compartments being pushed into the unfilled compartment to reduce and inhibit its capacity to receive unboxed cassettes.
Additionally, these prior art trays make no provision for arranging the retained objects in desired groups and further create a problem when using the tray for the storage of unboxed cassettes because the identifying label located on the face of a cassette cannot be seen when the unboxed cassette is placed in the tray as conventionally with the cassette label blocked from view by an adjacent cassette. This requires the user to remove each unboxed cassette in order to read the label.